It is well to be prepared for life as it is, but it is better to be prepared to make life better than it is.

— Sargent Shriver

From the inception of “Legal Aid” nearly 50 years ago, Northeast Legal Aid and its predecessors, Neighborhood Legal Services and Merrimack Valley Legal Services, have cobbled together resources to deliver high quality civil legal services to the poor and elderly in northeastern Massachusetts.

It should not be surprising that guiding our anti-poverty work is the firm belief that access to justice for all, not just for those who can afford it, is key to the happiness, stability and wellbeing of all in our community.

In some years our small band of lawyers and paralegals face as many as 10,000 requests for legal services from poor and elderly people in desperate straits. We take as many cases as we can to help those facing: violence in the home, financial exploitation, homelessness, wrongful denial of subsistence benefits, grinding consumer debt collection abuses, terrible housing conditions, and denial of necessary health care. Tragically, due to limited and reduced funding, we deny legal aid to over 60% of those asking for help.

Our supporters' longstanding commitment to increasing funding for the civil justice work we do and appreciation of the economic value it returns to the Commonwealth is testament to the rightness of what we are doing. We are honored to receive your support.

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As a federally funded Legal Services program, NLA will not expend donated funds for any purposes prohibited by 42 U.S.C. 2996 et. seq. or by Public Law 104-134.